Monday, June 8, 2015

Producing Protein Therapeutics: Could Water Buffalo Be The Next Big Thing?

Scientists are using animals’ milk
to produce therapeutics for humans. Manipulating the use of transgenic animal
milk for drugs has been researched for 20 years. The milk is purified of the
proteins and used as a drug. Only two drugs have been FDA approved since the
beginning of its research, but they have found a new animal, the water buffalo,
that would be a good model organism for this area of research.

I think it is very interesting that the
protein can solely be expressed in the milk of the animal. This is confirmed by
co-expressing the GFP protein with a protein of interest, and therefore the
fusion protein can be fluorescently detected wherever it may be present. This
is the same protein as we saw in “GFP Bunny” by Eduardo Kac, who requested an
albino bunny to glow green for his transgenic artwork.

If this mechanism of therapeutics
is deemed successful within the next decade, and would be deemed a good
mechanism of producing a drug, how would vegans feel about this? Perhaps some
viewers can weigh in.

Here is a list of animals whose milk is currently being used to create drugs: